After a star-studded lineup for Sun Stakes Saturday Championships night, The Downs at Mohegan Sun Pocono will offer a slate of future stars for a follow-up on Sunday (July 1).
Pocono has scheduled five $30,000 divisions of a Pennsylvania All-Stars event for two-year-old colt pacers. The top pacing colt trainers of the last few years all have multiple entries in the stakes sessions – Ron Burke has seven in, Brian Brown five, Ray Schnittker four.
Despite the fact that race day is the first day of July, the collective fields already have ten horses who have won in 1:56 or better, including six who have gone 1:54 or less (baby races and pari-mutuels treated equally throughout).
There are eight horses in the All-Stars who have already twice crossed the wire first, including three who have beaten 1:55 in each of their two victories: Semi Tough (race 3, PP1, Burke), Blood Money (race 5, PP7, Jimmy Takter), and Captain Malicious (race 7, PP7, Schnittker).
And that listing doesn’t even include the fastest two-year-old of 2018 at the time of this writing, De Los Cielos Deo. This member of the Burke Brigade, on June 18 over the Gaitway mile track, won in 1:52.3 while coming his own last three-quarters in an astounding 1:21.3, in his second lifetime start (he won the first, but “only” in 1:56.4). De Los Cielos Deo, a name which is a Spanish/Latin hybrid meaning “from the heavens of God,” does have un infierno de une mala posicion drawing the 8-ball, just outside of his fellow son of Captaintreacherous, Captain Malicious, in the seventh race, the last of the five All-Stars divisions.
That’s how you follow up a multi-million-dollar card featuring the stars of today: load up the next card with the stars of tomorrow.
FINISHING LINES -- Pocono will have a sixth $30,000 race on Sunday night, a Great Northeast Open Series (GNOS) event for pacing mares. Caviart Ally, who won in the GNOS last week from the rail at Philly and paid $72.20 to win, finds the other two series winners starting from more difficult spots: L A Delight from post six and Tequila Monday from post eight.
(PHHA / Pocono)